


I as a boy (I believed the saying)

by philthestone



Series: and there's a keepsake my mother gave me [3]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: & i have made my peace with that, F/M, Gen, Post-Infinity War, a lot more than i intended them to, the spiderman kids somehow wormed their way into this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-23
Updated: 2017-11-23
Packaged: 2019-02-06 00:56:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12806082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: She settles back on the edge of the bed and scoops the Zune into her hand, thumb flicking over the controls. Soft music filters into their shared cabin space, and Peter sways to it on instinct as he tries vainly to flatten down one errant curl at the very top of his head.It’s been a week. A week – long enough, apparently, for some kind of celebration. And they’re onEarth– but. Somehow, things haven’t imploded yet.





	I as a boy (I believed the saying)

**Author's Note:**

> this is why i should never start chapter fics bc i get distracted by other things HOWEVER. here is a follow up to the Sadness of the cure for pain is love bc i couldnt help myself
> 
> 1) whilst its not terribly necessary to read the other two fics in this series doing so will probably make the allusions to plot and chronology make a bit more sense  
> 2) title is, once more, from supertramp's "hide in your shell"  
> 3) a small disclaimer -- i can't remember if the name "gregg" is canon or not so if it isn't know that i got it from perilinpeace's beautiful works here on ao3
> 
> reviews are the voices of angels above and warm tight hugs from ur favorite person

There’s a stark difference between what a man knows and what a man knows to _say_ , and Gregg understands both. Tragically, maybe – like all those months telling his daughter everything was going to be just fine all the while knowing a different truth prepared him for this.

The fact of the matter is: Gregg knows that it was aliens.

The fact of the matter is also: Gregg never tells anyone it was aliens.

Cops figure he ran away. Can’t find any body, not after three months or six months or four years, and it’s a dead, cold case. It’s in the news for a little while, because their town is small and most everyone knows each other and a missing child is a big scare, but Gregg doesn’t touch a single paper. He has a funeral to arrange, after all.

The year two thousand and twelve rolls around and Gregg stares at the television set that he knows is playing the same New York footage in the living room next door, pulls on his old faded baseball cap and boots, and crosses his front lawn.

“Gregg, what in the hell,” says Nancy Maycomb’s spindly voice when she opens her front door, wrapped in that old shawl her daughter gave her three Christmases ago and peering at him from behind her glasses with shrewd eyes. “It’s near midnight.”

“Aliens,” Gregg Quill says, and after twenty-four years there’s still a stubborn determination in his voice. “I knew it was aliens.”

**

Here is what happens after:

Peter can’t figure for the life of him who made the executive decision to come back down and dock on Earth now that everything is over. Like, sure, the ship’s in disrepair and all their allies are here and the Avenger’s facility has some top of the line security and apparently, upstate New York the weather is really nice this time of year. But other than that – he just feels like he should have been consulted, is all.

Gamora says that she did consult him. She probably did – she usually does. Peter doesn’t think about the hellish events of the past two weeks and agrees that she really, usually does.

So to rephrase: the Asgardians left three days ago and Captain America’s retired to go be a nameless painter in some hole in Brooklyn and the Wakandans graciously vanished back into their cool as hell secret country, and Peter can’t figure for the life of him why he _agreed_ with the executive decision to come back down and dock on Earth.

“I like it here!” says Mantis. It’s evening, like it might be any other evening on their ship if not for the regular day cycle outside. Drax adds the finishing touches to their first proper-cooked meal in a week and Mantis helps Gamora lay down their bent-up silverware on the scratched galley table. “The Avengers are very nice!”

Peter grabs an assortment of cracked bowls from one of the shelves and takes the pot from Drax to start ladling out helpings. He thinks that maybe they should be back up in the main building hanging out with those guys, or something, but even after everything – it’s still easier to stick to themselves sometimes, he thinks. 

“Yeah,” he says, “they’re pretty cool.”

“They are not completely unbearable,” allows Nebula; Mantis beams at the solidarity, her antennae lifting.

“I have bonded in friendship with many of them!” announces Drax, wiping his hands on a dirty rag and smacking Peter on the back such that he nearly spills the bowl in his hands all over the table.

“They’ve got some cool tech,” says Rocket, half-crawling across the table to reach the makeshift bread bowl. “And them kids think we’re the coolest ever.”

“I am Groot,” says Groot.

“Sit down like a normal being,” Gamora says to Rocket. “Groot, please hand Rocket what he needs.”

She turns, eyes Peter – appraising, as Groot waves his extended branches in Rocket’s face because apparently he’s going through an obnoxious teenage tree phase.

“Those,” Peter says. “Those are all some great points.”

Gamora tilts her head; with her hair pulled back like it is the movement is delicate, almost birdlike. Peter reaches over and steals a mouthful from her bowl.

“You are both sickening,” says Nebula, without an ounce of inflection, and Gamora holds his gaze for a moment longer, before dropping it to threaten Groot and Rocket into behaving.

**

Here is what happens after:

They sleep in, like they haven’t slept in in what feels like years.

The ship is docked and the rest of their team can amuse themselves with any number of things, swap stories and tech and drinks with their new allies, commiserate on whatever the hell outlandish nonsense they want. Peter blinks his eyes open, cheek pressed into their recently, miraculously cleaned pillows, and it’s slow and groggy and without the usual edge underneath that prepares him to stumble to his feet and grab his guns. He knows that the sky outside is probably bright and cloudless (different from Missouri) and the trees big and tall (different from Missouri) and the quad in the facility packed with the weirdos who somehow managed to save the world (Missouri had weirdos, but not – not like this).

Gamora is in the galley making Terran coffee, different from their usual Xandarian, when he shuffles in, barefoot and sleep rumpled. Somehow, the weirdness of being back on Earth stops being real for just a moment.

Her hair’s still a mess and he can sense her grin when he presses up behind her and slips his hands under her loose tank-top, humming into her colourful curls.

“Something smells good.”

“It’s just coffee,” she says, as he presses his nose against the curve of her ear.

“Mmm, wasn’t talkin’ ‘bout the coffee.”

“Put some real pants on,” she says, “someone could walk in.” But she turns around in his arms and kisses him anyway, hands straying, mouth open and smiling and _warm_.

Rocket walks in five minutes later, and Peter _swears_ one of these days he really is going to shave him.

“Aah, disgusting! Think of the frickin’ children, why don’t you!”

He’s flushing, he knows he is, which is ridiculous because it’s hardly like he hasn’t been caught in worst situations. _Why_ three Terran children have decided to follow a talking raccoon into a busted up spaceship in the middle of the day when an entire superhero facility is available to them is beyond Peter’s current comprehension, but he stumbles back against the stove and bangs his elbow anyway. 

“Son of a f – _Rocket!_ ”

“This’s a common area! I already gotta install some d’ast soundproof walls, _jeez_ , but this? I bring some bright young minds here for edjudicatin’ and _this_ is what we hafta see?”

“Edjudicating,” repeats Peter. Gamora, who is manifestly good at keeping her cool but is tightening her jaw like she does when she’s flustered, breathes in deeply and turns back to her coffee, the hem of her shirt already back down to where it’s supposed to be. Peter tries his best to hide his hips behind her as inconspicuously as he can.

“We’re science students,” offers the dark-haired kid, Parker’s best friend, hesitant. Like that’s supposed to make sense.

“Speak for yourself,” says the girl. “I’m getting into Harvard Law.”

“Um,” manages Parker himself, who looks like he’s not sure whether he should be apologizing or physically removing himself from the situation, “um, Mr. St – Tony said that, he, um, wanted to talk to you. Mr. Quill.”

Rocket starts laughing, because he laughs whenever Parker addresses Peter in any form at all on principle (kid’s too polite for his own good) and the girl – MJ, Peter remembers vaguely – says,

“We should probably go to, like, the other room.”

Rocket continues to laugh.

“There is coffee,” says Gamora, who manages to slay beings the size of skyscrapers with a sword and offer embarrassed teenagers refreshments with equal amounts of success. She’s the coolest person ever, Peter thinks. “Take some if you want. Rocket’s explanations can be tedious.”

Rocket stops cackling and glares, the fur on his neck puffing up, which is something, Peter supposes. It’s something. 

He slumps against the counter, drags his hand over his face. The weird feeling is back.

“I wonder what Stark wishes to talk to you about,” says Gamora, blowing softly on her drink.

**

Here is what happens after:

It’s been two weeks, and they are slightly less battered, less in pieces, less exhausted. It’s easier to live, he thinks, when there’s no threat of universe destruction hanging over your head. 

Peter learns that New York City is just as loud and colourful and busy as he saw in the movies as a kid; that the old childish longing to see the big city never left, weirdly enough, even after years of seeing _louder_ and _brighter_ and _busier_. He learns that Terran technology evolves faster than he could have imagined, that Youtube and iPhones and Spotify exist. He learns, with an odd indiscernible feeling in the tips of his fingers, that it’s been almost thirty years and that means he doesn’t know how to read English anymore.

“It’s okay,” he tells Parker, who doesn’t have school because apparently it’s summer break – a concept Peter _remembers,_ finally – and that means that he has no other obligations and can attach himself to the people from outer space will little qualms. The kid’s eyes are wide with the imagined _faux pas_ , panic blooming over his sweet face in the split second it takes between Peter staring dumbly at the tourist map he’s just been handed and the sixteen-year-old realizing that the grown-ass adult man in front of him doesn’t know how to read. “ _Seriously_ , kid, it’s fine. Just – take me through it, I’m a fast learner.”

He’s a smart kid, this Spiderman, Peter thinks, when Parker fumbles with his last apology before discarding the map altogether and telling him he’s going to give him the tour himself. 

Halfway through the day, Parker says something about his Aunt May loving to meet them, and Peter suddenly thinks, unbidden – _mom would’ve thought this kid was a riot_.

He pushes that thought out of his head and focuses on whatever Parker’s saying about burritos. 

It’s – easier. 

_Easier_ is an interesting concept. He still wakes Gamora up from nightmares three days out of five because they’re worse now than they were before, but it’s just temporary, he knows. They’re going to heal. On the third day, she doesn’t wake up immediately and nearly sprains his wrist against the lumpy mattress.

“He’s gone,” she says ten minutes later, a hoarse whisper into the bare skin of his shoulder, and he knows she’s pretending that she isn’t trembling so he pretends she isn’t trembling too. His hands still press against her back, though, as steady as he can make them. At least she isn’t fighting anymore, her eyes squeezed shut against invisible demons. “He’s _gone_ , why won’t he leave my head.”

“You know it doesn’t work that way,” Peter says, voice soft, and hates that that’s true.

“I’m sorry I nearly broke your arm.”

“Eh,” he says.

“I’m serious.”

“You’ve done worst. Remember that time you kicked me in the face?”

“Peter,” she says, with that inflection to it that he knows means _stop_.

He shifts on the bed, so that he can look her in the eye. They’re so close he can count her eyelashes – four hundred in total, he’s done it before – and he can see the rapidly fading line where her temple was cut open three weeks before. He knows: she’s not sure what to do with herself, now. She smiles more frequently and kisses him more softly and laughs more brilliantly, and it’s only been three weeks. But she’s not sure what to do with herself.

He wonders if he’s being selfish when he says what he says next.

“So I talked to Stark today.”

(He learns: his grandfather is still alive.)

**

Gregg Quill understands that there are things that you _know_ and things that you know to _say_.

He opens the door on a Sunday in June to two people standing on his doorstep and he _knows_.

He says:

“Well I’ll be damned.”

**

Here is what happens after:

They dance together at Stark’s celebration, Gamora mildly drunk for the first time in her life in a way that makes her think it’s more the relief than it is the weak Terran alcohol. The air is hot and sticky and filled with riotous shouting and laughter, and Peter is inebriated enough to pick her up and flip her over his shoulder, Gamora nimble enough to land neatly on her bare feet. She’s not sure where her boots went, hopes she’ll find them later; she likes those boots. At intervals they stop, and mingle with others. At intervals they stop, and Peter makes a fool of himself singing loudly in the middle of the crowd, surprisingly accurate notes to songs he’s known his whole life because Rocket has hacked into the sound system and is playing one of the mixes on repeat. At intervals they stop, and her hands are all over him, his all over her, hidden away in some dark corner of the strobe-lit floor.

Later, she goes and sits with Nebula, alone again in a hidden hallway, and lets something in herself rebuild. Even later, she sits wide awake on the long field outside the facility while Peter sleeps beside her, lying face-down in the grass with his coat bundled up under his cheek. The stars twinkle overhead, the night air pleasant, and Gamora traces his flushed cheeks with her eyes, the way his eyelashes flutter. He’s going to be – _so_ hungover in the morning, she thinks. 

She can still hear the muffled notes of the Pina Colada song playing inside, and she wonders what it feels like to miss a place that’s still real, that’s still tangible and solid and _here_. 

Gamora has no memory of her parents outside of snatches of conversation, bits of inflection, flashing sounds and colours. She couldn’t tell you the exact colour of the hills outside their house, nor the comfortable dynamic of their small village. Even now, with Thanos gone, she hesitates – she can’t remember her mother’s face. 

She looks back down at Peter, who is snuffling lightly in his sleep. She thinks that maybe of all the ways you can miss something, this is the hardest.

**

Here is what happens after:

They heal.

 _Healing_ is a funny word, relative and absolute at once. Temporal and infinite. Complicated and simple.

A paradox, of sorts. 

In the first week her body stops aching, her cuts stop bleeding, her hands stop trembling. The rawness of her throat from all the times she screamed ( _at, for, with, because of_ ) fades away. She spends time handing tools to the warrior Valkyrie as she fixes her ship before the Asgardians leave; spars with Natasha at odd moments in the facility’s training floor, pulling her punches just a little bit because the other woman is still just human.

It’s nice, having women to talk to that are not Nebula or Mantis. Refreshing in the warm, full-bodied way Valkyrie smacks her shoulder, in the ease with which she asks Natasha for a clean dress to wear because she doesn’t own anything fancy enough.

She still finds herself sitting with her sister the most, though, shoulder to shoulder on the edge of one of the roof’s landing platforms.

“They made me try a churro,” Nebula says, not quite scowling. She keeps trying to scowl, Gamora knows, and it doesn’t come as fully as it used to. There’s something warm and solid and assuring that curls in her chest every time. 

Gamora hums.

“Stop – I didn’t say I liked it.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“I hate you,” but it doesn’t have any of the bite of before. It’s been – enough time. Enough time, Gamora thinks. Nebula stretches her neck back and crosses her legs, looking across the quad underneath them. Scarred as her hull is, Gamora can still spot the Milano’s colourful stripes from where they sit. 

“So,” says Nebula, “how long did you convince Quill to stay?”

Gamora inhales, folds her hands over themselves in her lap, frowns.

“I didn’t convince him. We just – stayed.”

Nebula shrugs, and Gamora turns her frown on her.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she says. And then, after a moment. “He’s nervous. This place makes him nervous.”

It’s odd, because they were facing her monster of an abuser just two weeks ago and she knows that as awful as that was, worrying about _her_ was distracting him from the thought of Earth. Thanos is gone now (Gamora _breathes_ ) and they are here and very suddenly she feels selfish.

“I know,” she says.

“You should –” Nebula makes a face – “talk to him. Ugh. This is the worst.”

“Thank you,” says Gamora, because she can, because she knows it will make Nebula roll her eyes. 

**

Here is what happens after:

They work on fixing the ship, fixing themselves. They rest, laugh, cry, dance some more. She feels, only a hint of bitterness on her tongue, like this has almost become a routine – fall apart, get up, put the pieces back together.

Gamora wakes up from nightmares three nights out of five and Peter wakes up the other two, his curls sticking to his forehead and his chest heaving and a string of swear words on the tip of his tongue. She wonders if the others – their new friends – know this, this way of living. For some reason, she can’t fathom that they do, though she knows that’s not true. 

_For some reason_ – she scoffs at herself. The reason: they’ve known this way of living since their disastrous first meeting nearly five years ago. She’s known it even longer.

The intimacy of that length of time makes empathy outside her little circle of a family difficult, even as she presses her cheek against Peter’s and tries not to feel as though his choked yells are any fault of her own. Somehow, this time, the nightmares are easier to deal with; after Ego it felt as though each day was suffocated by a blanket of exhaustion, but now, they can laugh during the day, dance in the evenings, make love with full hearts and light eyes. It’s not a smothering weight but sharp flares of lingering anguish, less like the dragging fingertips of a petulant child leaving a room and more like healing scabs. 

They can be hidden away in the small hours of the night cycle, and maybe that’s why it doesn’t bother Gamora that she cries, more than once, against the darkened bedding of their bunk. She watches Peter sleep again, eyes catching on the fading bruise on his shoulder shadowing over the raised skin of a far older scar, tracing down to where his scratched titanium washer of a ring rests against his neck.

 _Talk to him_ , Nebula had said.

In the mornings, Nebula clenches her jaw almost knowingly. Gamora thinks about healing and feels as though she is waiting for something.

**

Here is what happens after:

Peter says, easy and nonchalant in a way she knows immediately to be anything but,

 _Pops is still alive_. 

His eyes are hopeful. 

_What do you say we go down to Missouri?_

Gamora smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> a second disclaimer bc i cant help myself in this either -- i stole yet ANOTHER titular captain swan scene for this so props to u if u caught it and if u didnt don't take this as a reason to watch ouat bc its The Worst
> 
> thank u for ur time


End file.
